Sunday, December 1, 2013

I am sure that y'all have heard by now that TpT is having a HUGE Cyber Monday sale! As a seller and a buyer, I am so excited. I've teamed up with some of my blogging buddies for a super fun link up, Deck the Halls With TpT!

Special thanks to our hostess, Christina Bainbridge! :) Click on the image above to check out this FUN link up party! :)

We are showcasing our favorite products to the tune of our favorite Christmas carols. So here's my playlist!

Thank you for caroling through my store with me! I hope you found something off my playlist you can use. :) My entire store will be 20% of Monday and Tuesday. Don't forget the code Cyber for an additional 10% everyone's sale prices!

Friday, November 29, 2013

Hi, friends! Remember me? :) I am so sorry for my blogging absence lately. Like many of you, I've been a little overwhelmed! Between transitioning to the Common Core, graduate school, a new teacher evaluation system, and trying to leave time for friends and family; this sweet blog of mine has been neglected. The good news is that I have a little bit more time on my hands no that I am no longer coaching Girls on the Run season and I look forward to getting back into creating and blogging.

With the craziness of this year, I've never been more thankful for Teachers Pay Teachers. I've purchased a lot of great resources to use this year with my sweet students. It's comforting to know that so many great resources are out there made by those who know to reach students the best, fellow teachers!

Many of you know that I am a HUGE Ohio State fan! I just LOVE my Buckeyes! Our biggest rivalry game is this Saturday. We will travel up north to play that team up north.

In honor of my Buckeyes amazing season and one the greatest rivalries in college sports, I am throwing a Beat Blue sale today and tomorrow! :) All non Christmas items are 20% off today and everything is 20% off tomorrow! I know Cyber Monday is coming up but this a great chance to purchase anything you need for the upcoming week, since the sale is actually during the work week. :)

Friday, October 4, 2013

Happy October, everyone! :) Even though this month has only been four days long, it has been jammed packed with SO much. I completed my first set of OTES evaluations, our first night of parent teacher conferences, papers for graduate class, and a sickness to boot. Even though this week was super busy, we had a lot of fun in reading this week!

Mighty Jackie is a great little book about Jackie Mitchell, a seventeen-year-old who played against the New York Yankees in an exhibition game and struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Since baseball's post season just started, it was the perfect week to read this story.

Our district has a 2008 version of Treasures, so we've been aligning each story to the Common Core ourselves. This past week we focused on point of view and using specific details from the selection when responding to questions about the text.

On Monday, I introduced point of view by reading two versions of The Three Little Pigs.

Fairy Tales are a great way to introduce point of view, there are so many great options!

This is what our focus wall looked like this week. I got the posters from my fabulous friend, Nicole Shelby's Point of View pack. I also her pack in my small groups this week. I used the point of view paragraph's from Nicole's pack at the beginning of the week with each of my groups. They were great for quick formative assessments, and my students really enjoyed them!

I put the recording sheets in page protectors and just reused them throughout the week, loved it! :)

In the beginning of the week, we focused on point of view as read Mighty Jackie. Later in the week, we practiced some Close reading techniques as we answered questions about the story.

Again, I just put the questions in page protectorsand reused the questions with most of my groups. It was a great way to save paper and added some novelty to increase engagement in groups this week.

I have a large percentage of gifted kiddos this year, so I've been extending their thinking with Amanda's fabulous Just Glue It! Multi-Step Response prompts. My students LOVED writing journal entries from Jackie's point of view and I was blown away by how amazing their writing was!

My kiddos LOVED Jackie's story and kept asking so many questions about her, so luckily I found this video on You Tube. They really enjoyed seeing some actual footage of Jackie striking out Babe Ruth.

Today, with some of my groups we read a passage I found about Lizzie Murphy, another woman who played professional baseball during the same time period as Jackie.

We compared the two women after reading about Lizzie and it was a great way to squeeze in a review of comparing and contrasting.

Today we read Players in Pigtails as a class as a mini lesson. Players in Pigtails is about Katie Casey and the All American Girls Professional League.

This book is also available on United Streaming as well and is narrated by Zooey Deschanel. My students really enjoyed this book too and it lead to a lot of great discussions about the advancements that have been made in the opportunities girls have in sports now, compared to when Lizzie and Jackie were girls and during the 1940s. We also used specific details from the text to answer questions about the story.

All this talk and reading about baseball lead to a surge in interest in some of these books. :) My boys have quite the waiting list going on with these. :)

Well, that was a little recap of our week. We had a lot of fun this week, and I'm almost sad the week is over. Have a great weekend!

Friday, September 20, 2013

So let's just pretend that I haven't blogged in a really long time. ;) That I've showed you my classroom tour and all our back to school fun. K? I promise those things will come soon and you'll see why below.

New standards, new evaluation system, new assessment systems to learn/proctor, graduate school and Girls on the Run have taken up a lot of my time lately. I *think* that I might be able to come up for air for a little bit now.

The school year is going really well! I feel so, so, so blessed to teach language arts to two awesome sets of kiddos. It's been great being able to readjust mid day and try things again in the afternoon. :) I also share my kiddos with one of the sweetest and kindest people I've ever met. So needless to say, I've really been loving being departmentalized.

This year, I finally implemented the Daily Five. I've had the book for years and finally decided it was now or never. My students and I have been loving it. I've gotten a couple of questions about how the Daily Five works in my fourth grade classroom on my Instagram and thought I would share what has been working for me! Even though there are lots of great blog posts out their about the Daily Five and so many resources, I can't stress enough how important it is to actually read the book! I read lots of blog and looked a lots of websites this summer but nothing helped me like reading the book!

Like my rotation chart? I got it from Lori of Teaching with Love and Laughter! I love it! You can download it here. The stations that have been working well for me have been read to self, word work, and work on writing. I plan on blogging more about what my kiddos do during these rotations soon.

We've tried and tried read to someone but it hasn't quite clicked. Many couldn't quite grasp it wasn't a time to socialize and our stamina building days never went well. Plus after about three weeks of whole group lessons, they needed to be super short and to the point, while worked on building our stamina, my kiddos were more than ready to get things started! I hope to try it again now that we've started. I'm hoping now that they've seen Daily Five in action, they'll be a little more cooperative!

I don't have all the materials for listen to reading, so if/when that is phased in this year, it will be later. The awesome thing about the Daily Five is you can easily adapt it to fit the needs of your kiddos!

Most days, we do three rotations. I have four guided reading groups. I meet with each group at least twice a week. Between my two classes, I have eight groups. I use this little notebook to write down things I didn't finish with each group so I'm not starting each group by saying, "Okay, what did we do last time?" Not, like I've done that before. :)

I use a mixture of our district formative assessments, classroom performance, and MAP testing data to make my groups. I keep generic resources I need for most groups in my Teacher Time tub. I keep handouts, task cards, stir sticks (reading pointers), extra pencils, games, and hand outs that I use with most of my groups in here. Specific materials for each group, I keep in a basket on a book shelf behind my guided reading table.

This was our first full week of Daily Five rotations and the kiddos and I loved it! Here's a little peek at what we did!

Inferring from fiction and non fiction is big in the common core for fourth grade, so one day this week, I used a portion of Creekside Teacher Tales' Find Us Forever Homes Pack for part of our small group time. My kiddos LOVED this activity, and I'm glad we only found one sweet doggy a home this week so I can reuse this activity a few times this year! :)

We also worked on identifying different types of Text Structures. We read a magazine article from our Treasures book and decided how the text was organized/structured. We used Rachel's free Informational Text Structure Handout to help us out.

We also worked on analyzing characters in literature. We focused on using text based evidence in our descriptions. To do this, one day we read a part of our weekly story, The Raft, and wrote descriptions about the main character, Nicky. With some groups that required some additional instruction, I used Rachel's character traits task cards.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Hi there, friends! I had grand intentions of linking up for the rest of Teacher Week and then well, I decided to do lots of last minute fun things I probably won't be able to do once school starts, or at least the first few weeks of school. I met friends for ice cream and chatted for hours. We had an impromptu fire pit night with our neighbors, and I had dinner with a few co workers. It was nice to pause and enjoy life for a bit in the midst of all the craziness of going back to school. :) I'm hoping to link up throughout the next few weeks.

I am really excited because tomorrow is the beginning of Teachers Pay Teachers Back to School Sale!

Today I am linking up to a fun linky/blog hop to share some of my store's most wish listed items

My top wish listed item is my Types of Sentences Activity pack. It is filled with fun games and activities to review the types of sentences. My students really enjoyed this unit last year and really set the tone for a lot of the hands on activities we did last year.

The second most wish listed item in my store is The Story of My Name Writing and Craftivity. I love this activity so much! My students always enjoy learning what their name means and how their parents chose their name. You can read more about this activity {here}.

Climbing up the list is my Spelling Contracts Throughout the Year pack! I have used these contracts for years and my kiddos and their parents have always enjoyed them! They really enjoy switching things up each month and the flexibility the contract provides. Judging from the feedback, many buyers' students have loved it too and it just gives me the chills to know my resources are making learning fun and enjoyable for so many students.

Monday, August 12, 2013

I am so excited to join in the fun this year for Teacher Week at Blog Hoppin'! I missed out on the fun last year because of it was the start of the school year for me AND we closed we moved on the SECOND day of school. Talk about crazy! So let's get started!

1. I am married to the love of my life and best friend, Ryan. We just celebrated three years of marriage last week. Time sure flies by when your heart is full! He's my biggest cheerleader and supporter and is such a blessing to me! I thank God for him every day.

Fun fact, we were introduced by the grandpa of one of my former students. :)

2. We have two sweet border collie lab mixes, Maddie and Moss, who bring so much joy and love to our lives. Nothing is better after a hard day at work than puppy cuddles!

Moss is the big ole boy with white paws. :)Maddie is the sweetie with a little too much white on her face. :(

3. I've wanted to be a teacher since I was in first grade. I was a struggling student but never knew differently because of my sweet first grade teacher. She never gave up on me and I really believe I am where I am today because of her.

4. This school year will be my seventh year teaching, which I can't believe. I've been in two schools and three grade levels. I spent four years in third at one school and budget cuts led me to a new school, which I love, and second grade. While my kiddos were sweet, I really felt the entire year I was more of an upper grade elementary teacher. So I jumped at the chance to go to fourth grade! Last year I was self contained, and this year I'll be teaching ELA (reading and writing) to two sections of students. I'm really excited about this new adventure!

Here's a sneak peak at my classroom this year!

5. Last year my husband and I built a house and we love being homeowners! We've gotten to know and hang out with our neighbors a lot this summer and we've tackled a lot of home improvement projects!

6. I am a HUGE Ohio State Buckeye football fan! :) I went to pretty much every home game with my dad in high school and college. I often drove home for the weekend from my college in Kentucky, just to drive two more hours to the game! Going to games was a huge bonding experience for us, and I even played the Ohio State Fight Song at the end of our father/daughter dance at my wedding. It was awesome. :) One of the first things I purchased for my new house was an OSU flag to go outside our front door. My husband and I are going to a game this October and I am so excited!

7. This past summer I returned to graduate school after a hiatus. Word to all you other teachers out there, don't do that. Just finish! I am taking a class this fall as well. If all goes well, I'll get my reading endorsement this spring and then my masters a year or so later. I don't deal well with loads of stress, so I figured one class a semester is perfect. :)

8. I am a coach for Girls on the Run, and it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It's made such a difference in the lives of the girls I've coached each season and I can't wait to get started this year!

9. I LOVE to cook but have fallen prey to the convenience of take out the past few school years. I've decided to stop blaming my schedule, we have our students until 4, and do something about it! Last week I prepped about 20 main dishes and froze them. Mainly simple things like crockpot meals or baked pasta, but it feels really good knowing I won't have to worry about dinner for a while. If I continue this, I'll let you know how it's going and what meals we really liked!

10. Sometimes I wake up and pinch myself because I don't believe I'm living such a fabulous life! God has blessed me with a great family, sweet friends, a career I love, and a creative outlet in a blogging where I get to share my passion of teaching beyond the four walls of my classroom. I am blessed beyond belief and so very thankful!